citizens at the center: a new approach to civic engagement

CitizensCenter

a new approach to civic engagement

at the

About the Author

This paper was researched and written by Cynthia M. Gibson, Ph.D. Gibson is principal

of Cynthesis Consulting, which specializes in public policy research and analysis, program

development, strategic planning, and marketing/ communications for nonprofit organizations,

including philanthropic institutions. Previously, she served as a program officer at Carnegie

Corporation of New York in the area of “Strengthening U.S. Democracy,” as well as a senior

staff member and consultant for several national nonprofit public policy organizations and

foundations. She is the author of numerous publications—including From Inspiration to

Participation: Strategies for Youth Civic Engagement and (with Peter Levine) The Civic Mission

of Schools—that have become standards for the civic engagement field. She is also a member

of the adjunct faculty at The New School University’s Milano Graduate School of Management

and Urban Policy and a senior fellow at Tufts University.

About the Case Foundation

The mission of the Case Foundation, founded in 1997 by Jean and Steve Case, is to achieve

sustainable solutions to complex social problems by investing in collaboration, leadership,

and entrepreneurship. The foundation is applying these strategies to expand civic engagement

and volunteerism, meet the needs of underserved children and families, create thriving and

sustainable economic development for communities, bridge cultural and religious divides,

and accelerate innovative approaches to health care. The foundation’s work stretches across

the United States and around the world.

Copyright 2006 by the Case Foundation. This paper may be duplicated and distributed in its entirety, in print

or electronically, without prior permission. A downloadable pdf is available at http://www.casefoundation.

org/spotlight/civic_engagement/gibson. When using excerpts, please cite Citizens at the Center: A New

Approach to Civic Engagement, The Case Foundation, 2006.

�CITIZENS AT THE CENTER: a new approach to civic engagement

Is the United States undergoing a civic renewal? Many in the

service and civic engagement domain say “yes,” pointing to recent data indicating that volunteerism is on the rise, especially among young people.

Those outside this domain, however, aren’t so sure,

based on equally compelling research indicating

that Americans feel more isolated than ever and

powerless to do anything about the problems facing

their communities and the nation. As a result,

they are turning away from civic and public life to

engage in activities—including volunteering and

charitable giving—that may be less an impetus for

deeper civic engagement than attempts to assuage

the inchoate yet palpable sense among increasing

numbers of Americans that things are spiraling out

of control, that there is little connection between

people and their public institutions and leaders,

and that the country has drifted away from its core

democratic values to those emphasizing materialism,

celebrity, and “me” rather than “we.”

In the summer of 2006, senior staff members

from the Case Foundation convened to ask if there

is a way to make service and civic engagement a

deeper and more entrenched cultural value and

ethos—one that reaches a majority of people and

that is reflected in their everyday lives, as well as in

the civic life and health of their communities.

Working with Cynthia Gibson, an independent consultant,

the foundation sought to answer this question by

interviewing scores of leaders in the service/civic

engagement field, as well as those outside this

domain; culling the findings of scholarly research; and

synthesizing numerous mainstream articles, websites,

and publications. A surprising consensus emerged

rather quickly around the perception that service

already is a deeply embedded value in American

culture, based on the country’s strong religious and

spiritual traditions that encourage “giving back,” its

vibrant nonprofit sector, and its consistently high levels

of charitable giving and volunteering in comparison

to other nations.

What is not a cultural ethos is civic engagement,

invoking important questions as to what can be

done to use Americans’ commitment to service as

a springboard for deeper engagement in the civic

life of their communities.

While this issue—moving people from service to civics—

is hardly new to the service and civic engagement

field, the discussion has been predicated largely on

using politics, especially voting, as a proxy for civic

engagement and, in some cases, has assumed the

latter to be an inherently deeper and more developed

form of civic engagement. Yet many Americans have

turned away from politics and political institutions for

the same reasons they have turned away from other

civic institutions—a sense that what they do matters

little when it comes to the civic life and health of

Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement

� THE CASE FOUNDATION

their communities or the

country. As Rich Harwood

has written, “Americans

are walking away from the

public square because

leaders no longer reflect

the reality of the average

people’s daily lives in

their words and actions—a

retreat that transcends

race, class, gender, socioeconomic status, and even

political party. People are angry with the conduct of

their leaders at the national and even local level, but

feel powerless to do anything about it.”1

It may, therefore, be time to consider new

approaches—beyond voting and volunteering,

which are necessary to a healthy democracy but

insufficient to embed a sustainable, deep, and

broad cultural ethos of engagement. As Carmen

Siranni and Lew Friedland write, “Civic renewal

entails more than reforming elections and campaign

finance, increasing voting, or [encouraging people

to volunteer]….[It] entails investing in civic skills

and organizational capacities for public problem-

solving on a wide scale and designing policy at

every level of the federal system to enhance the

ability of citizens to do the everyday work of the

republic.”2

What is needed is nothing short of a broader civic

renewal movement—one that works across a wide

variety of sectors, populations, initiatives, and

fields to revitalize our democracy. This requires

moving beyond the tactics of civic engagement

(voting or volunteering) or outcomes (number of

trees planted or people served) to the process

of civic engagement—especially the ability and

incentive for ordinary people to come together,

deliberate, and take action on problems or issues

that they themselves have defined as important and

in ways they deem appropriate—whether through

volunteering, voting, activism, or organizing.

This kind of citizen-centered and citizen-created

cultural approach is a subtle, yet powerful, shift from

the way in which service and civic engagement are

conceptualized and operate. Rather than ask people

to “plug into” existing pre-determined programs,

initiatives, or campaigns, citizen-centered approaches

help people form and promote their own decisions,

build capacities for self-government, and develop

open-ended civic processes. Moreover, the deliberative

process—no matter how messy it can be—is viewed

as important to civic engagement as the tactics

employed to address problems and concerns. These

approaches also view people as proactive citizens,

rather than as consumers of services; are focused

primarily on culture change, rather than on short-

term outcomes, issues, or victories; and include a

cross-section of entire communities, rather than

parts of them.

When they become patterns of habit, values, and

attitudes, these kinds of citizen-centered and citizen-

driven approaches have the potential to create or

renew local civic cultures. In turn, these new civic

cultures lay the groundwork for embedding a deeper

ethic of civic engagement across communities so

that it becomes part and parcel of everyday life,

rather than episodic activities such as volunteering

or voting that are squeezed between work or school

and family and less important than either.

There is evidence that this approach can work—

and is working—to help bring citizens together to

“People are angry with the conduct of their

leaders at the national and even local level, but

feel powerless to do anything about it.”

Rich HarwoodFounder and President,

The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation


work for the “common good.” This paper describes

some of these efforts and suggests several ways

in which the service and civic engagement field

is well positioned to help advance the citizen-

centered framework on which they were developed,

given the extraordinary progress it has made in

raising public awareness of and participation in

activities that have benefited millions of Americans

across the country. The challenge now is to use

this important work as a foundation for broader

and long-term civic renewal by promoting citizen-

centered approaches aimed at providing all people

with opportunities to walk the talk of civic and

public life in their communities and beyond—now

and well into the future.

Is Service or Civic Engagement a Cultural Ethos?If INCREASEd buZZ IS ANy INdICATIoN, THERE HAS bEEN

an upsurge in civic activity during recent years.

The number of people who volunteer, especially

young people, has risen. Programs to encourage

service and civic engagement, including those that

are federally supported, are growing and helping

millions of Americans channel their desire to “do

good” into action that benefits communities across

the United States and throughout the world. More

private sector companies are implementing policies

and activities that encourage volunteering among

employees. Faith-based institutions, through which

most volunteering and charitable giving occurs, are

increasingly welcomed in the public square.

To many in the service and civic engagement

field, such activity suggests a civic renewal in

America—one whose seeds were planted before the

events of September 11 and that grew thereafter.

A recent study by the Corporation for National and

Community Service, for example, showed that nearly

29 percent of the population volunteered to help

charitable causes during 2005—an increase of

6 million people from before 2002.3 Data culled

from the Census Current Population survey for a

new national “Civic Health Index,” published by

the National Conference on Citizenship, indicates

that there was an increase in volunteering between

2002 and 2003, especially among young people.

From 2002 to 2003, the percentage of young

people (ages 18 to 25) rose from 19.49 to 21.4

and continued to increase to 21.58 percent in

2005.4

Whether and to what extent the events of September

11 generated widespread, deeper, and sustained

involvement in civic and public life, however, is

questionable. The Civic Health Index also found

that Americans’ level of community participation,

their interest in joining organizations, their levels of

social trust, and their willingness to socialize with

other people all continued on the downhill slide

they had been on before September 11. These data

resemble findings from another, much-publicized

survey by Duke University researchers, who found

that Americans feel far more socially isolated today

than they were two decades ago. One-quarter of

Americans said they had no one with whom they

could discuss personal troubles, more than double

the number who were similarly isolated in 1985.

Programs to encourage service and civic engagement,

including those that are federally supported, are growing and

helping millions of Americans channel their desire to “do

good” into action that benefits communities across the United

States and throughout the world.


Overall, the number of people Americans have in

their closest circle of confidants has dropped from

around three to about two.5 The Washington Post

reported that the Duke study “paints a sobering

picture of an increasingly fragmented America,

where intimate social ties—once seen as an integral

part of daily life and associated with a host of

psychological and civic benefits—are shrinking

or nonexistent.”6

In short, while there are millions of Americans,

especially young people, who are trying to “make

a difference,” largely through volunteering, there

remains an inchoate yet palpable sense among most

people that what they do matters little when it comes

to the civic life and health of their communities,

states, or the country overall. Americans also express

despair over what appears to be the country’s drift

away from its core democratic and civic values

to those that emphasize “winning at all costs,”

consumerism/ materialism, greed, selfishness, an

“us versus them” mentality (particularly prevalent

in political discourse), a cult of celebrity, and

others that are “eclipsing family, community, and

responsibility.”7

Harry Boyte, co-director of the Center for Democracy

and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota’s

Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, calls this

the “problem that has no name”—a deep sense of

unease about the loss of public life and a feeling

of powerlessness to do anything about it.8 As a

result, many people have retreated into silence

and away from public life, turning instead to

things they can control and feel will help make a

difference, such as volunteering, giving to charities,

and helping their friends. Americans’ penchant for

volunteering, in fact, may be less a springboard

for deeper engagement in civic life and more a

temporary panacea to the alienation and sense of

being unable to “make a difference” that many

Americans feel. As Boyte notes:

Volunteering is certainly widespread and in

that sense it is an ethos, but it’s an ethos

that is also an echo. It’s like a clump of trees

left standing in a once vast forest that has

mostly disappeared. It may be expanding,

but it is usually marked by a kind of ‘bubble

culture’ pattern that is part of the problem.

Our culture has become extremely ‘gated,’

not only geographically but intellectually and,

more broadly, culturally…. Even though people

live in bubble cultures, however, most also

want a culture shift or culture change (this

is especially true among young people). The

problem is that there isn’t much language

of culture change—that ‘breaks the silence’

about how to talk about the alienation many

feel to mention how to do it, without some

practice.9

Given these trends, the challenge for those working

in the service and civic engagement domain is to

find and promote new ways of leveraging Americans’,

In short, while there are millions of Americans, especially

young people, who are trying to “make a difference,”

largely through volunteering, there remains an inchoate yet

palpable sense among most people that what they do matters

little when it comes to the civic life and health of their

communities, states, or the country overall.


especially young people’s, commitment to service as

a foundation for inculcating a deeper and more firmly

entrenched cultural ethos of civic engagement—an

ethos that helps give people a sense of public

purpose and a belief that their voice matters in

larger issues. Such an ethos must also:

n Be able to withstand the vagaries of forces that

prevent it from becoming firmly rooted in everyday

life;

n Be sustained beyond events such as natural

disasters and the terrorist attacks of September

11; and

n Go beyond a relatively narrow self-selected

group of actively engaged volunteers, which

data indicate are largely white, well-educated,

middle-class, and female.10

The focus on making “civic engagement,” rather

than “service,” a cultural ethos is deliberate and

based on a perception that service already is an

important and significant ethic in the United States.

Historically, service has had a long and rich tradition

in American culture, stemming largely from the

country’s strong commitment to religious faith and

spiritual traditions that encourage individuals to “live”

the values of charity, compassion, and stewardship.

The country’s service ethic is also reflected in the

plurality of groups that have emigrated to the United

States and who, once here, banded together through

voluntary associations to provide services to their

brethren.11 These and other organizations are part

of a larger nonprofit sector comprising more than

1.4 million groups, as well as more than 350,000

congregations, that provide mechanisms for self-help

and social welfare services to the disadvantaged and

offer venues for Americans to pursue an array of

cultural, social, political, and religious interests and

beliefs.12 This infrastructure, along with the United

States’ consistently high levels of volunteering and

charitable giving, has become the envy of many

countries around the world, including several that

have launched initiatives that are attempting to

create similar “civil societies.”

Are Voting and Volunteering Enough?If THE uNITEd STATES AlREAdy HAS A dEEply EmbEddEd

service ethic, how can this be used as a foundation

for embedding an equally deep ethos of civic

engagement across the country? Although this

issue—moving people from “service to civics”—has

been the focus of much discussion in the service

and civic engagement field, much of it has focused

on tactics, namely voting or volunteering.

But is voting or volunteering—or any of the other

myriad tactics used to promote civic engagement—

enough? A small but growing group of scholars and

practitioners in the civic engagement field say “no.”

According to Carmen Siranni and Lew Friedland,

professors of sociology at Brandeis University, civic

renewal will require more than “reforming elections

and campaign finance, increasing voting, or making

our system more inclusive of the great diversity

of Americans. To be sure, these are unfinished

projects that warrant

much attention. But

civic renewal also entails

investing in civic skills

and organizational

capacities for public

problem-solving on a

wide scale and designing

policy at every level of

the federal system to

“Civic renewal will require

more than “reforming elections and campaign finance,

increasing voting, or making our system more inclusive of the great

diversity of Americans.”Carmen Siranni and Lew Friedland

Professors of Sociology, Brandeis University


enhance the ability of

citizens to do the everyday

work of the republic.”13

Peter Levine, executive

director of the Center for

Information and Research

on Civic Learning and

Engagement (CIRCLE),

agrees: “Volunteering

and other tactics, including civic education and

voting, are important parts of civic life, but they

are still subcategories of larger civic engagement,

which, if it’s to become a cultural ethos, needs to

be focused less on tactics, ‘positions,’ and specific

issues and more on the quality of the nation’s

public life over the long term.”14

While some argue compellingly that volunteering

can be a springboard for deeper civic engagement,

especially among young people, others disagree,

noting that there is insufficient evidence that

young people engage in this activity with larger

civic goals in mind. Jane Buckingham, president

of the Intelligence Group, a market research firm

specializing in young people, has found that even

among Gen Y’s—a cohort that research shows believes

strongly in their ability to “make a difference”—the

motivation for volunteering is not necessarily related

to improving civic life and democracy.15

Friedland and Morimoto found similarly that much

of young people’s motivation to volunteer stems

from the desire to improve their applications for

college or jobs. They also want to “meet friends.”16

This explanation also surfaced in MTV’s recently

commissioned study, “Just Cause,” which revealed

the most commonly cited factor as to why young

people volunteered was to “have fun with friends.”17

Buckingham says there is also a sense among young

people, “even Gen Y’ers who want to help, about

‘what’s in it for me?’ and ‘if it’s that important it’ll

find me or it’ll be required.’ As a result, they tend

to be involved in short spurts and in projects “they

can control,” rather than larger public or civic

initiatives, she notes. Former CNN anchor Judy

Woodruff, who is completing a television series for

PBS that paints a picture of the perspectives and

concerns of a wide and diverse group of young people

across the country, agrees: “There are definitely

some young people out there who really do believe

they can make a difference, and they’re doing

some really amazing things. But it’s certainly

not spread across the cohort, especially when it

comes to making change in political institutions

or processes.”18

Many argue that the answer is getting people,

especially young people, more involved in politics.

The reality, however, is that politics, including

voting (which is often used as a proxy for civic

engagement), is also not necessarily serving as a

venue through which people feel they can make

a difference, due to their frustration over political

processes and institutions that were founded on a

notion of democratic participation becoming nearly

closed to ordinary citizens. In a recent interview

with John Bridgeland, CEO of Civic Enterprises,

one former policymaker summarized the problem:

“Instead of getting the facts, you get partisan fiction;

instead of positioning the center to find common

ground, you get a dash to the political extremes;

instead of seeing more leaders in government

who resist power and reflect humility, you see an

insatiable quest for power and gratification of the

“Volunteering and other tactics, including civic

education and voting, are important parts of civic life,

but they are still subcategories of larger civic engagement.”

Peter LevineExecutive Director,

Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE)


ego. Americans want better leadership and because

they don’t get it, they tune out.”19

Still others believe that Americans have been crowded

out by professionals and other “experts” who increasingly

diagnose, define, and propose solutions to public

problems without providing space for citizens in

those communities to weigh in or, more important,

decide for themselves what those problems are and

what actions they will take. “As soon as we see a

civic deficit,” says Bill Schambra, director of the

Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, “we

deploy professionals or send them into communities

to ‘help.’” In recent decades, professionals increasingly

have taken over the airwaves, political campaigns,

nonprofit organizations, foundations, and myriad other

spheres of American life that were once, arguably,

more open to the opinions and participation of a

more diverse group of citizens. Critics charge that

this professionalization is spilling over into the service

and civic engagement field, leading it to approach

“citizenship as something to be found rather than

to be created.” 20

beyond Voting and Volunteering: Citizen-Centered Approaches to Civic EngagementTHERE IS lITTlE quESTIoN THAT VoTINg, VoluNTEERINg, ANd

other strategies such as civic education, community

service, and organizing designed to increase civic

engagement in the United States are important

and have helped to inspire millions of people to

become more deeply involved in civic and public

life. Whether they can serve to embed a widespread

and deeper ethos of civic engagement across diverse

groups of people over the long term, however, is

unlikely unless there are more efforts to provide

ordinary citizens with opportunities to connect with

others who feel civically isolated or powerless and

work collectively toward the common good.

In short, we need a civic renewal movement—one that

works across a wide variety of sectors, populations,

initiatives, and fields to revitalize our democracy

by linking emerging community-based efforts to

engage in what some call “public work,” “collective

decision-making through deliberation,” and/or

“collaborative problem-solving.”21 These kinds of

citizen-centered and citizen-driven approaches move

away from defining and viewing civic engagement

as a set of tactics (voting, volunteering, service or

organizing) or outcomes (planting more trees or

increasing the number of people who vote). Instead,

they focus on creating opportunities for ordinary

citizens to come together, deliberate, and take action

collectively to address public problems or issues that

citizens themselves define as important and in ways

that citizens themselves decide are appropriate and/or

needed—whether it is political action, community

service, volunteering, or organizing.

Many argue that the answer is getting people, especially

young people, more involved in politics. The reality,

however, is that politics, including voting (which is

often used as a proxy for civic engagement), is also

not necessarily serving as a venue through which

people feel they can make a difference, due to their

frustration over political processes and institutions that

were founded on a notion of democratic participation

becoming nearly closed to ordinary citizens.


Such processes, when they become patterns of habits,

values, and attitudes, have the potential to create or

renew local civic cultures. These new civic cultures,

in turn, lay the groundwork for embedding a deeper

ethic of civic engagement across communities so

that it becomes part and parcel of everyday life,

rather than episodic activities such as volunteering

or voting that are squeezed between work/school

and family, and less important than either.

What do Citizen-Centered Approaches look like…? To IlluSTRATE THE NoTIoN of cITIzen-cenTered engAgeMenT,

Peter Levine describes two hypothetical communities.

In the first, education is considered primarily the

job of professionals who work for the public schools.

Citizens participate by voting on bond issues and

in school board elections or by volunteering at the

schools’ request. Adults do most of the volunteering

and are the only voters; youth have little to say

about the governance of their schools. Professionals

assign volunteers relatively easy and episodic jobs,

such as raising money in bake sales or helping on

field trips. Most of the local debate about education

is value-free. Standardized tests for students are

created by experts outside of the community

and are not debated very much. Occasionally, an

explicitly moral issue—such as evolution or sexual

education—flares up, but it is usually the concern

of ideological activists.

In the other hypothetical community, education

is seen as the way in which the whole population

transmits values, skills, habits, and knowledge to

the next generation. This is an explicitly ethical

task, so there is much discussion about values—not

only concerning divisive, hot-button issues, but also

subtler, day-to-day questions about what books are

best to read, how kindergarten boys should behave

on the playground, or whether there are too many

cliques in the high school.22 Adults take personal

responsibility for educating youth and others by

serving as teachers, members of school boards,

volunteers, and coaches. There are also roles for

students themselves, not only as volunteers, but also

as board members and activists. The community—

libraries, parks and recreation facilities, and religious

congregations—is seen as both an educator and

educational experience.

Importantly, the second community may not score

any better than the first on standard measures of

civic engagement (e.g., the rate of volunteering

and voter turnout), but it reflects a deeper citizen-

centered type of engagement that has yet to be fully

explored, let alone measured or assessed in public

discussions about increasing civic engagement in

the United States. The latter tends to be focused

on measuring outcomes such as the number of

trees planted, volunteers mobilized, or people who

voted. Within a citizen-centered framework, the

measurement shifts to whether communities have

the ability, incentive, and capacity to continue to

work collectively with diverse groups of people to

address the day-to-day problems of daily life as

they move forward into the future. Perhaps the most

important measure is whether the community has

a culture—a sense of ongoing practices, habits,

Perhaps the most important measure is whether

the community has a culture—a sense of ongoing

practices, habits, norms, identities, and

relationships—that can sustain engagement against

cultural trends going in the other direction.


norms, identities, and relationships—that can sustain

engagement against cultural trends going in the

other direction.

…And What makes Them distinct? THERE ARE SEVERAl WAyS IN WHICH CITIZEN-CENTEREd

approaches differ from others:

They focus primarily on culture change, rather than

short-term outcomes, issues, or victories, although the

latter can be a foundation for communities to feel

efficacious in moving forward with other collective

efforts. Often, these approaches start by asking people

to envision end results or kinds of communities

that a broad representation of its members want

to see—the “common good”—and then works with

communities to decide how to get to that point. As

Ira Harkavy, associate vice president and director

of the Center for Community Partnerships at the

University of Pennsylvania, suggests: “Instead of

asking what kind of education do we want for our

kids, we should be asking ‘what kind of community

do we want and then how do we create the kinds

of schools that will help us create that kind of

community?’”23 Answering that question will require

participation from most, if not all, parts of that

community, including institutions that are sometimes

overlooked in those discussions and plans such

as businesses, churches, schools, neighborhood

associations, and public agencies.

They provide opportunities for people to form and

promote their own decisions, build capacities for self-

government, and promote open-ended civic processes,

rather than ask people to “plug into” structured or

pre-determined programs, initiatives, projects, or

campaigns that offer “training” or “education” to

“develop” people. Citizen-

centered public work is

not planned, structured,

or driven by outside

experts, professionals,

organizations, or those

external to the community

(however “community”

is defined), nor does

it attempt to inspire, persuade, or manipulate

people to adopt a particular view or position on

an issue or agenda. Rather, it promotes deliberative

processes that involve a wide cross-section of the

entire community (not just parts of it) to identify

public problems or concerns—no matter how messy

or complex they can be—and views this as being as

important to civic engagement as tactics employed

to address these problems and concerns.

They are pluralistic and nonpartisan and open to “learning

from a wide array of approaches and to collaborating

with elected officials of various political persuasions

who are willing to problem solve with citizens.”24

This does not mean that people leave their beliefs

or passions about particular issues or topics behind

when they engage in public problem-solving. Rather,

people’s individual perspectives become part of a

larger deliberative process through which people

with various beliefs convene to determine how best

to address what is best for their communities. As

Sirianni and Friedland observe, “…people can be

partisan Democrats or Republicans and still collaborate

to revitalize civic education in our schools, partner

with congregations to revitalize neighborhoods, work

with traditional adversaries to restore ecosystems,

and engage diverse stakeholders in community

visioning for an entire city or region.”25

“Instead of asking what kind of education do we want for our

kids, we should be asking ‘what kind of community do we want and then how do we create the kinds

of schools that will help us create that kind of community?”

Ira HarkavyAssociate Vice President and Director of the Center for Community Partnerships,

University of Pennsylvania

�0 THE CASE FOUNDATION

They help to transcend ideological silos. On the Right,

an open-ended and deliberative approach helps

to alleviate the concern that much of what passes

for civic engagement is a not-so-subtle attempt

to enact an “activist agenda.” Unlike efforts to

mobilize people to support some progressive cause,

citizen-centered politics helps citizens to decide for

themselves, in their

diverse communities,

what kind of action

they will take and for

what purpose. On the

Left, this approach

reflects progressives’

commitment to inclusion

and diversity and

making all voices,

especially those of under-represented groups, heard

on issues they decide are important. For moderates,

it represents an opportunity to be involved in issues

that may not fall under a cultural or political aegis

but may be as simple as citizens coming together to

call on their schools to stop holding soccer games

on Sundays. The common thread throughout is

that no matter what citizens decide, by creating

spaces for themselves to deliberate with a wide

variety of “voices” in their communities—and on

issues that they, rather than outsiders, decide

are important—they are actively practicing and

experiencing the essence of democracy.

…and the perennial and wearisome debate over which

is more important or lacking—“service or politics” that

tends to dominate public discussions about fueling

civic engagement in the United States. To some, this

is a false dichotomy because it fails to recognize

that while service and politics are both necessary

to ensure a healthy democracy and civil society,

neither—alone or in combination—is sufficient.

As Martha McCoy, executive director of the Study

Circles Resource Center, notes: “There is a vast

ground between volunteering and voting that needs

to be cultivated. The communities that are bringing

hundreds and thousands of people into dialogue

and action are cultivating that ground.”26

They are not just about “talking.” It is easy to become

enamored with a romantic notion of public deliberation

as the “good old days of the town hall meetings”

held on the local common—a scenario that is not

only nearly nonexistent these days, but also ignores

the fact that such meetings were not as inclusive

or egalitarian as they are sometimes portrayed.

Moreover, the idea that all problems can or should

be addressed through “dialogue” or “talking them

through,” can strike some as naïve, elitist, or simply

unfeasible.

Citizen-centered adherents stress that although

deliberation, dialogue, and discussion is important

to citizen-centered public work, it is not enough

to enhance and sustain healthy civic cultures. “If

people don’t see the results of all this deliberation

at one time or another,” Ira Harkavy asserts, “it will

be difficult to sustain any kind of civic renewal. If

people are just engaged in process and not results,

it’s an empty promise. You have to link the process

and outcomes. No democratic process, no democratic

results.” In other words, “deliberation without work

is empty.”27

They do not replace politics or other democratic processes.

Citizen-centered approaches do not presume to

replace government or political systems. As David

“There is a vast ground

between volunteering and voting that needs to be cultivated. The communities that are bringing hundreds and thousands of people

into dialogue and action are cultivating that ground.”

Martha McCoyExecutive Director, Study Circles Resource Center

��CITIZENS AT THE CENTER: a new approach to civic engagement

Mathews, president of the Kettering Foundation,

notes: “Organic, citizen-based democracy is not an

alternative form of politics like direct democracy;

it is the foundation for democratic institutions and

representative government” because democracy

“operates through the joint efforts that citizens

make to solve common problems.”28 Others agree,

seeing deliberative public work as integral to the

political processes and policy-related decision-making

that increasingly have left out ordinary citizens

who have become tired of partisanship, infighting,

and “clubbiness” that has come to characterize

politics in the media age. Although strengthening

public deliberation will not necessarily solve all the

problems of institutional politics, Mathews adds,

the problems of “the institutional system will only

get Band-Aids if we don’t keep the foundations of

self-government intact. And that is what encouraging

public deliberation can help to do.”29

Harold Saunders, president of the International

Institute for Sustained Dialogue and former assistant

secretary of state, agrees. He calls for a new kind

of politics—one that moves beyond politics as only

what governments, parties, and interest groups do

to what people say and do and the relationships

they have with one another, as well as with larger

political institutions. Specifically, he says politics

should become a “process of continuous interaction

engaging significant clusters of citizens in and out

of government and the relationships they form to

solve public problems in whole bodies politic across

permeable borders….”30 As a result, politics would

become open-ended, in that instead of institutions such

as the media, government agencies, or policymakers

deciding for people what will be discussed and under

what parameters, these institutions and leaders

would bring people together to decide what matters

to them so that they can determine priorities and

actions collectively.

Deliberative processes can also bring together people

who feel disenfranchised from traditional politics

to explore new ways of “doing politics,” and as a

result, become civically engaged in the process

of larger institutional reform to create political

systems that value the voices and participation

of ordinary citizens. Today, there are millions of

Americans—about one-third of the electorate

and half of young people—who see themselves

as independents because they have consciously

rejected “partyism” and all the constraints that come

with it. This is a constituency ripe for becoming

more involved in policy discussions and questions

free of labels; yet they continue to be viewed by

political parties merely as “swing voters.” At the

end of the day, says one reform advocate, any

“political direction that narrows the organizing

of independents to party-building as an end in

itself misses what [many] Americans are looking

for.”31 Independents’ historic role as drivers of

reform—including the abolitionists, women’s and

civil rights advocates, and others—also make them

a potential force for changing not only a system

they see as damaged, but the way and degree to

which Americans are engaged.32

Today, there are millions of Americans—about

one-third of the electorate and half of young people—

who see themselves as independents because they

have consciously rejected “partyism” and all the

constraints that come with it.

�� THE CASE FOUNDATION

“but We Already do That!”THE HEAdINg AboVE IS A CommoN RESpoNSE WHEN SERVICE

and civic engagement organizations or initiatives

are presented with citizen-centered frameworks.

Indeed, most efforts to encourage service and civic

engagement are based on a notion of helping people

and communities become more vibrant and healthier

places to live—now and in the future. Some, also,

are built on a notion of empowerment—helping

people help themselves or encouraging them

to become stronger actors in building stronger

communities. Others offer training to develop

future leaders, and still others offer those who

have never had the opportunity to “give back” a

chance to do so through volunteering, mentoring,

or other activities.

Although these efforts are important and vital, their

primary goal is usually not creating opportunities for

public deliberation, goal-setting, and action-taking.

Many programs also tend to define problems and

solutions in advance, rather than “create open forums,

networks, and institutions in which diverse groups

of citizens can make their own decisions and act

efficiently.”33 Much service and civic engagement

work, for example, tends to be episodic, time-limited,

or narrowly focused on a pre-determined issue or

political agenda. Some volunteering efforts do for,

rather than do with citizens in communities, leaving

citizens relatively passive recipients of services or

as participants in community projects that may

not be addressing the most pressing needs the

community believes are most important. Similarly,

Citizen-Centered Approaches Are: > Focused primarily on culture change, rather than

short-term outcomes, issues, or victories, although the latter can be a foundation through which communities achieve a sense of efficacy to move forward toward other efforts collectively.

> Representative of a cross-section of the entire community, rather than parts of it.

> Concerned with the deliberative process to identify public problems or concerns—no matter how messy or complex it can be—as equally as important to civic engagement as the tactics employed to address these problems and concerns.

> Cognizant of the importance of helping people form and promote their own decisions, build capacities for self-government, and promote open-ended civic processes.

Citizen-Centered Approaches Are Not:> Structured or pre-determined programs,

initiatives, projects, or campaigns into which people are asked to “plug in” and participate.

> Focused on providing “training” or “education.”

> Planned, structured, or driven by outside experts, professionals, organizations, or those external to the community (however “community” is defined).

> Attempting to inspire, persuade. or manipulate people to adopt a particular view or position on an issue or agenda.


political engagement efforts sometimes decide the

issues that need to be addressed with little or

no input from communities, deploying experts or

professional organizers to “mobilize” communities,

or viewing residents as foot soldiers in carrying out

actions for pre-determined agendas.

Community organizing is a strategy that traditionally

has been associated with citizen-centered approaches,

and when done well—with citizens leading the

way—it is an effective strategy for advancing cultural

change. In a citizen-centered public deliberation

frame, however, organizing is a component of a

larger effort that attempts to involve all those

in a community who identify opportunities for

collective action that emerge from discussions

among all participants. This does not mean that

citizen-centered public work replaces the other

ways in which individuals and groups organize

or advocate; instead, it complements them by

building relationships among all groups toward

the goal of enhancing “public policy for democracy

so that the design of policy at every level of the

federal system enhances citizens’ capacities for

responsible self-government, rather than treating

them as merely passive clients, aggrieved victims,

entitled claimants, or consumers ever-ready to use

the exit option.”34

Auspiciously, there are organizations and efforts

that are putting citizens at the center, leaving

goals and strategies undetermined until citizens

deliberate and make their own decisions, and taking

concerted action that is inculcating an ethic of

engagement. Among these are the following.

n Faith-based organizing networks such as pICo

(formerly the pacific Institute for Community

organization), the gamaliel foundation, the Industrial

Areas foundation, and dART (direct Action and

Research Training Center), provide opportunities

for people and congregations to translate their

faith into action by bringing them together to

identify and solve neighborhood problems, as

well as weigh in on broader issues at the city,

state, and national levels. PICO, for example,

emphasizes people coming together “based on

faith and values, not just issues or anger” and

on active listening through house meetings and

larger public deliberative meetings that involve

a broad cross-section of communities in public

deliberative activities that, eventually, morph

into action.

n A new statewide effort, “minnesota Works

Together,” is working to improve civic life by

building relationships among diverse individuals,

organizations, and entire sectors committed to

shifting the culture from “me” to “we.” It involves

students, community groups, and legislators from

all over the state who are working collaboratively

to solve issues that are important to the larger

public, providing a “civic laboratory for the

nation.” One of the participating organizations,

the Jane Addams School in St. Paul, has created

a path-breaking neighborhood alliance that has

seen the entire community claim responsibility

for education.

“Minnesota Works Together” involves students,

community groups, and legislators from all over the

state who are working collaboratively to solve issues

that are important to the larger public, providing a

“civic laboratory for the nation.”


n Study Circles, a national organization that convenes

groups of community residents to develop their

own abilities to solve problems, has worked in

43 states since 1989 and with 412 communities

and engaged thousands of people nationwide.

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for example,

circles began when 200 sixth-graders met with 75

community and school board leaders, parents, and

business people to talk about bullying in schools.

The trust that was developed led to more dialogue

and, eventually, to collective action on the issue

of school redistricting, which had previously not

been touched by the city council. The circles

have now become part of developing the city’s

10-year master plan, which has incorporated many

of the residents’ ideas. In Kansas City, study

circles have helped to eradicate drug houses in

neighborhoods, launch a new tenants association,

set up a youth sports camp, create a Spanish-

speaking parents association and tutoring service,

reduce crime, and boost graduation rates from

50 percent to 70 percent. At the national level,

Study Circles has worked with foundations, policy

groups, and service organizations to help them

include citizen-centered deliberation and action

into their efforts.

n With support from the W.K. Kellogg foundation, the

youth Innovation fund helps to build the capacity of

young people to participate as decision-makers and

change agents in their communities. In Nashville,

Tennessee, for example, young people are working

with adults from numerous public and private

institutions to design and implement new systems

and programs that will help improve the city’s

public schools. Young people have also taken a

leadership role in coordinating youth input and

involvement in other local issues that have been

identified by the community as important. In

Cleveland, Mississippi, young people, through the

Cleveland Youth Council, conducted an extensive

analysis uncovering increases in teen pregnancy

rates and a lack of recreational or after-school

programs for young people that became a catalyst

for several small town hall meetings to address

these issues. As a result, community leaders agreed

to establish a community youth center featuring

leadership and recreational programs for young

people across the city. Currently, young people

are working with the Chamber of Commerce and

a local university to create a business plan and

proposal for the center.

n In Flint, Michigan, the Harwood Institute worked

with a wide range of groups and individuals

to identify and discuss ideas for civic renewal

in a community that had internalized a sense

of hopelessness that any change was remotely

possible, given the deep economic and social

turmoil it had been experiencing in recent years.

Through the creation of “The Place for Public

Ideas,” a “school” through which scores of Flint

residents could convene and deliberate new ideas

and solutions for the problems they faced, Flint

was able to increase the number of identifiable

community leaders, establish more than three dozen

new networks of collaborating organizations, and

increase public trust in institutions. The institute,

In Kansas city, study circles have helped to

eradicate drug houses in neighborhoods, launch a

new tenants association, set up a youth sports

camp, create a Spanish-speaking parents association

and tutoring service, reduce crime, and boost

graduation rates from 50 percent to 70 percent.


now housed at the local United Way, also helped

to establish “Homes for Civic Engagement” in

housing groups, churches, the cultural center,

and the business association.

n At the national level, National Issues forums bring

people of diverse views together to talk about

important issues that concern them through an

array of venues—from small study circles held in

people’s homes to large community gatherings.

As structured deliberative discussions, the forums

offer citizens opportunities to weigh possible ways

to address a problem and then take action. The

network is deeply embedded in communities across

the country, including West Virginia, through the

West Virginia Center for Civic Life; Cincinnati, where

more than 150 forums on racial tensions were

held after a series of police shootings; El Paso,

Texas, where forums have been held for decades

and are televised by local public broadcasting

stations; and in schools, community colleges,

and prisons in several states.35

n Also at the national level, AmericaSpeaks, a

nonprofit that facilitates deliberations around

public issues, has convened thousands of people

to make their voices heard on everything from

rebuilding the World Trade Center site after the

September 11th attacks to the future of Social

Security. The keys to large-scale deliberations

such as these, the organization claims, are diverse

participants, neutral materials, table facilitation,

participation technology, immediate reporting,

and links to decision-makers, which provide

the deliberative outcomes with legitimacy and

efficiency. Also important, however, is the element

of “embeddedness.”36 When organizing these

deliberations, AmericaSpeaks partners with local

decision-makers, community organizations and

institutions, civic groups, and residents, thereby

fostering local ownership of deliberative processes,

strengthening local structures for public action,

and promoting the legitimacy of the outcomes.

Ultimately, the organization hopes to embed such

practices into national institutions and organizations

to support large-scale deliberations at the national

level.37

What Can the Service and Civic Engagement field do to Advance Citizen-Centered Approaches to Civic Engagement?THE SERVICE ANd CIVIC ENgAgEmENT fIEld CAN HElp

advance these approaches in several ways:

shift the foCus.

Advancing citizen-centered approaches requires

a shift in focus from “What we are going to do to

encourage civic engagement, how, with whom,

where and for how long?” to:

n What opportunities can we provide for people

to convene with others who are concerned

about issues in their communities, schools, or

workplaces to deliberate about problems and

issues; define these for themselves; and decide

what they will do about them?

n Do we see people as consumers of our services

and activities, or as citizens?

n To what extent can we help people feel more

empowered to carry out what they plan to do about

The Harwood Institute worked with a wide range of groups and

individuals to identify and discuss ideas for civic renewal in a

community that had internalized a sense of hopelessness that

any change was remotely possible.


public problems in ways that they believe are most

appropriate for them and their communities?

n How can we facilitate citizen-driven and citizen–

centered engagement so that it becomes deeply

embedded in the day-to-day functioning of

communities and people in those communities are

able to solve the problems of everyday life?

n Are we asking people to “plug into” already existing

initiatives or decide for themselves what to do?

start young.

Young people are disproportionately represented

among the civic innovators, those dissatisfied with

politics as usual and committed to creating new,

constructive, citizen-centered opportunities. But

many young people are left out of civic life, partly

because their assets (creativity, energy, idealism, and

fresh thinking) are overlooked. Civil society has no

future unless young people are deliberately taught

the skills they need to organize and collaborate, but

such instruction must start young, many believe—

younger than is now the case. As Jon Zaff, vice

president for research at America’s Promise: The

Alliance for Youth, states, “Lots of civic engagement

efforts that focus on young people start way too

late, either in high school or later, when research

shows that the development of emotional and

social skills needed to ensure civic behaviors in

adult life are formed much earlier.”38 Among those

skills are learning how to listen, think critically,

work in groups, and tolerance—all essential to how

effectively young people can engage in community

problem-solving as adults.39

Starting earlier will require new approaches to civic

learning that focus not only on civic knowledge,

but also civic skills, behaviors, and attitudes. This

is far easier to say than do, given that schools

are already overburdened and stressed due to

testing requirements and demands to meet state

standards. There also continues to be division

between those who believe that civic learning should

focus on government and history and those who

view experiential learning as equally important to

civic learning. This divide has made it difficult to

adopt more comprehensive approaches to civic

learning that include both these elements, as well

as time for reflection and discussion about public

issues and current events—discussions that have

been relatively scarce in recent decades because

of schools’ fears of inciting controversy and/or

parents’ disapproval.

Civic learning also tends to be focused primarily on

high school students, particularly 11th- and 12th-

graders, rather than being offered at all grade levels

in developmentally appropriate ways. To embed

civic engagement as an ethos among young people,

says Judy Woodruff, “we need to start as young as

elementary schools in helping young people work

in their communities, identify problems, and have

opportunities to discuss these with their peers

so that they develop a sense of ownership about

the process.” As MTV’s “Just Cause” research

indicates, young people who are the most involved

in their communities got their start, on average,

at age 12.

civil society has no future unless young people

are deliberately taught the skills they need to organize

and collaborate, but such instruction must start young,

many believe—younger than is now the case.


Civic learning and opportunities to practice civic

engagement are not limited to school-based activities,

however. Families, community organizations, and

other institutions are just as important in providing

opportunities for young people to learn and practice

civic skills—and most important, feel effective

as civic actors. As John Minkler, an education

consultant, notes, “The more meaningful opportunities

[young people] have to practice core democratic

values, create learning communities, and express

their voice, the more they will become effective

citizens and community leaders” and able to work

with others in their community to “address the

critical problems facing mankind today.”40 This

will happen, says Kenny Holdsman, director of the

W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Youth Innovation Fund,

only when young people are viewed as partners

in collective efforts to improve civic life, rather

than constituents or foot soldiers for “adult-driven

programs or agendas with pre-determined approaches,

tactics, and issue slices.”41

involve all Community

institutions.

All types of community institutions—faith-based

organizations, schools, businesses, and government

agencies—should be engaged in providing opportunities

for public deliberation and problem-solving. Nevertheless,

they often treat people, especially poor and working

poor people, “like outcasts or even outlaws” on issues

and problems that affect them, writes Ernie Cortés,

organizer for the Industrial Areas Foundation. To

that end, citizens must begin rebuilding institutions

in ways that encourage broader deliberation among

diverse groups of people and organizations in

communities and, ultimately, help undergird action.

“For democratic communities to work,” asserts Noelle

McAfee, associate editor of the Kettering Review,

“there need to be longstanding public institutions

through which people can come together, institutions

that are not shy about standing up for what citizens

are coming to, nor of building relationships with

officials. These institutions could convene public

deliberations and serve

as venues for public

action, convening with

officials, and even

advocating for the

public wills.”42

Schools can serve as

central institutions in

efforts to bring communities together around common

issues and concerns. “By embedding experiential

learning institutionally into schools, including colleges

and universities, we help embed civic engagement

in communities where those schools are located

and beyond,” says Ira Harkavy. Service-learning, for

example, has been instrumental in moving toward

this goal by linking classroom-based instruction with

community projects that offer students the chance

to apply what they have learned to “real-world”

situations, as well as how to build collaborative

relationships with a wide range of individuals and

organizations outside the school. Although service-

learning has sometimes been criticized for focusing

primarily on “volunteering” and acts of charity,

rather than on helping to engage young people in

solving social problems, the latter increasingly is

being attempted through innovative programs that

link students’ volunteering and community service

with rigorous curricula that include reflection and

analysis about these experiences and deliberative

discussion about them, and about the larger policy

“For democratic communities to work,

there need to be longstanding public institutions through

which people can come together.”

Noelle McAfeeAssociate Editor, Kettering Review


issues, current events, and political processes

affecting communities.

Faith-based organizations have long been central

in promoting and advancing an ethic of service

and charity in communities, but they are also

well-positioned to advance a similar ethic of civic

engagement. In Boston, for example, Reverend

Eugene Rivers is engaging and mobilizing his

congregation—and others—to deal with the gangs,

violence, and drugs that have wreaked havoc on the

community. Recognizing that volunteering would

not be sufficient to address this issue—nor would

waiting for policymakers to do something—Rivers

worked with his congregation, community residents,

companies, other churches, and policymakers to

identify and deliberate about the problem and ways

to approach it, and then decide themselves the

course of action they would take. One approach was

to permit young boys to continue to be members of

gangs, but to organize the gangs around positive

activities, not guns. After having been plagued

by a crime wave with many deaths, Boston saw

its homicide rate drop dramatically over the next

two years.

A challenge for the service and civic engagement

field is understanding the importance of including

faith-based institutions in all civic renewal work,

rather than “siloing” it into the separate category

of “faith-based initiatives.” “A large amount of

giving, volunteering, and community work goes on

in religious communities,” notes Les Lenkowsky,

a professor and director of graduate programs

at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy,

“but the dialogue about faith-based organizations

tends to focus on using them as intermediaries

for something else that’s usually pre-determined

by others, rather than on what we can do to help

them do what their doing,”43 including public work

and deliberation.

Private-sector institutions also have a key role to

play in fomenting more public deliberation and

action-taking, especially in the communities where

they are located and do business. Such efforts would

go beyond the promising and positive steps many

corporations have taken to incorporate a social

responsibility ethic into their repertoire—such as

encouraging volunteering and community service

among executives and employees—to include

working in partnership with community residents

from all parts of the community to discuss public

issues and problems. Corporations can also help

to provide financing of actions the community has

decided are appropriate to implement.

Government and other public agencies also can

encourage more public voice in policymaking and

other processes, but in many people’s eyes, it

is more prohibitive, than welcoming of citizens’

voices. An unprecedented opportunity to send a

different message, says Peter Levine, was missed

completely with Hurricane Katrina—an event the

federal government could have used to convene

citizens to air their concerns and possible solutions

to the crisis. “The federal government,” Levine says,

“should create an infrastructure that is ready to

organize public deliberations when needed. This

infrastructure would consist of standards for fair

In Boston, reverend eugene rivers is engaging

and mobilizing his congregation—and others—to

deal with the gangs, violence, and drugs that have

wreaked havoc on the community.


and open public deliberations, a federal office

that could coordinate many simultaneous forums

and collect their findings, and a list of vetted

contractors eligible to convene public deliberations

with federal grants.”44

Carmen Sirianni suggests that agencies like the

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could become a

“civic enabler of consequence” that builds community

capacity and “facilitates partnerships so that civic

associations can begin to grapple effectively with

a whole host of complex environmental problems

that command-and-control regulation alone cannot

address.” Sirianni argues that, with the exception

of national service programs, government’s role in

civic revitalization has generally been absent in

public and scholarly discussions about the issue,

despite studies that show that “some of the most

robust forms of local participation are those formally

recognized and supported by city government on a

city-wide basis.” He points to the EPA’s systematic

efforts over several years to provide support that built

the capacity of local watershed associations and the

intermediaries that worked with them as examples

of how such efforts have, in turn, “transformed the

behaviors of individual citizens” by educating them

about the hazards of pesticides and lawn fertilizers,

introducing sustainability practices among farmers

and business, forming nature education groups,

and undertaking a broad range of participatory

restoration and education projects. The grants also

enabled national organizations and resources to

provide training and other assistance.45

Steven Goldsmith, board chair of the Corporation

for National and Community Service, and John

Bridgeland have proposed that government agencies

generate “civic impact statements” in connection

with their grantmaking so that government is mindful

of and promotes more direct citizen participation in

local programs receiving federal support. The idea

is to ensure that government policy promotes more

civic engagement, rather than discourage it.

use teChnology to Create a

new kind of “publiC Commons.”

Technology is seen by many as one of the most

promising venues for encouraging, facilitating, and

increasing citizen-centered dialogue, deliberation,

organizing, and action

around a wide variety of

issues, but it has been

relegated to the sidelines

in many of the public

discussions about service

and civic engagement. At

the same time, millions of

Americans have hungrily

grabbed at what technology has to offer to develop

social networks and connect with others not only

in their geographic communities, but across the

country and internationally.

A smaller but growing segment of the population

has been working to use this connective power for

civic purposes because it is one of the few, if not the

only, mediums in the world that allows 200 million

people to “take action and be active, rather than

reactive, like television and media,” says Joe Trippi,

former campaign manager for the Howard Dean

presidential campaign.46 He compares the advent of

the Internet to the invention of the printing press as

one of the most significant events in American history,

especially as a tool for increasing civic participation

and engagement.

“An unprecedented opportunity to send a different message

was missed completely with Hurricane Katrina.”

Peter LevineExecutive Director,

Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE)

�0 THE CASE FOUNDATION

Trippi and others point to the Dean campaign’s

ability to raise significant amounts of money for his

presidential run and also connect strangers with

similar interests to work collectively toward common

goals as evidence of the power of technology to

provide a new venue for connecting people and

giving them opportunities to take action. He notes,

“If you tried to put up your picture on telephone

poles in your neighborhood with the words ‘Come

to my house and work for Howard Dean tonight

at this address,’ people would think you were

crazy. But that’s exactly what the Internet allowed

people to do—and 175,000 people showed up in

the houses of, in many cases, virtual strangers.

The miracle wasn’t that this happened with so

many people but that we had strangers having

serious conversations, which would lead them to

engage others the next time.” He believes that

this trust, which data underscores is essential for

public deliberative processes, stems directly from

the Internet, which allows people to “say and do

things they might not normally say or do initially

in public.”

Indeed, the Internet has

begun to help change

everything from journalism

(through blogging that

challenges the media

to go beyond headlines)

to education (through

open source sites such

as Wikipedia and others) and may now have the

potential to change our democracy, especially

institutions that have increasingly provided little

incentive or opportunities for citizens to participate.

Recently, for example, hundreds of philanthropists,

nonprofits, charities, technology companies, and

others gathered to discuss the civic potential of using

Web 2.0 technology—a collection of user-oriented

technologies such as self-publishing. Organized by

Daniel Ben-Horin, executive director of CompuMentor,

a nonprofit intermediary, the conference included

groups from the Kiwanis Club and the American

Cancer Society to Amnesty International and Blogher.

Ben-Horin’s organization, in fact, developed a set of

Web-based tools that organizations and communities

can use to self-organize, hoping that these could

harness the “same kind of energy that has been

mobilized for Wikipedia…to fight AIDS or hunger

or homelessness.”47

These events have occurred almost parallel to the

service and civic engagement field, which rarely

intersects with the technology sphere. Among the

reasons for this are unawareness or “illiteracy” about

technology and its capacities and a tendency to view

civic work under a more traditional organizational

or institutional rubric—one that many in the

technology sphere see as increasingly becoming

outdated. In traditional organizations, decisions

are made hierarchically and then distributed “out”

into the world where they are received by people.

With technology, people now have the opportunity

to weigh in through a more reciprocal process

and choose from literally millions of options for

information and services to which they previously

had not had access.

“When you’re open to a citizen-centered framework,

your organization becomes much smarter,” Trippi

asserts. Allison Fine, author of Momentum: Igniting

Social Change in the Connected Age, believes

that technology helps to “break down the walls of

“If you tried to put up your picture on telephone poles

in your neighborhood with the words ‘Come to my house

and work for Howard Dean tonight at this address,’ people would

think you were crazy.”Joe Trippi

Former Campaign Manager for the Howard Dean presidential campaign


institutions” in ways that promote more collaboration

and reciprocity among diverse groups of individuals

and groups. It also provides the “grease” for more

rapid and efficient social problem-solving. “When

you have the ability, even as a single individual,

to see a problem like an oil spill on a lake and

can tell thousands of people about it instantly,

you can mobilize more people faster and more

effectively.” As a result, the role of organizations

shifts from agenda-setting leaders to supporters or

diffusers of information and resources across wider

networks. The thousands of people who left their

offices and schools in early 2006 to participate

in immigration marches, Fine points out, were

fueled less by formal organizations and more by

the buzz created among peers using cell phones,

text messaging, and blogs.48

Trippi, Fine, and others believe that the next

challenge for those interested in civic engagement

is developing ways to use these tools in ways that

help people engage for the common good, rather

than for polarizing purposes or issues, which has

turned off many Americans from traditional politics

and political institutions. Starting from the larger

notion of the “common good” will lead to more

participation at the onset and will build trust among

diverse groups of people, which, in turn, can lay a

foundation for more productive discussions when

disagreements about issues do arise. Ultimately,

technology holds the promise of turning the entire

power structure on its head, empowering grassroots

citizens who previously felt voiceless.

It is important, however, to underscore that technology

should not be seen as the silver bullet for civic

engagement but rather an important tool in it.

“Technology gets in the way sometimes of really

moving toward our larger goal of participation,”

says Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs, “so

you can’t start there. You have to start by asking

people, ‘What interests you? What do you care

about? What issues get you interested?’ and then

help them explore ways to use technology to turn

those ideas or desires into action.”49 Rheingold is

currently working on developing curricula that helps

educators use the technology with which young

people are comfortable—such as digital media,

blogs, wikis, and podcasts—and their interest in

peer social interaction toward activities focused

more on civic engagement, including helping young

people develop a “public voice” on issues that are

important to them.

It is still too early to tell whether this rapidly

changing medium will be a net benefit for civic

engagement, especially whether people can address

entrenched social problems by associating online. In

particular, there is a relative lack of online work that

focuses on local, geographical communities—even

though many real-world problems are local. It also

remains to be seen whether people can develop

civic identities online, rather than become active

With technology, people now have the opportunity to

weigh in through a more reciprocal process and choose

from literally millions of options for information and

services to which they previously had not had access. …

Ultimately, technology holds the promise of turning the entire

power structure on its head, empowering grassroots citizens

who previously felt voiceless.


citizens through their families, churches, schools,

and neighborhoods and then use computers as tools.

As Deepak Bhargava,

executive director of the

Center for Community

Change, notes, “Technology

has been enormously

useful in improving

the transparency of

many of our public

institutions and can

be an effective tool in

distributing information and making connections

among people, but it shouldn’t ever take the

place of face-to-face contact, which is equally

important in strengthening the civic and political

life of communities.”50

explore and Create new

meChanisms to enCourage

these praCtiCes.

Inherent in citizen-centered approaches is the

conundrum of how to facilitate and encourage these

processes in ways that allow citizens themselves to

be the drivers. Many people, for example, are not

necessarily willing or able to jump into full-blown

community discussions, which can dissolve into

little more than one or two people holding forth in

ways that quell or prohibit other voices or opinions.

Moreover, “we don’t even know how to talk publicly

in groups anymore,” Levine notes, because “we’ve

been influenced so much by the loud voices in the

media who tend to represent diametrically opposed

viewpoints about things with little in-between.” Today,

instead of idealism, irony is valued, which tends

to silence people who do have a vision about the

“common good” or what their communities could

be, especially in public forums.

Ernie Cortés adds that in this age of “political

correctness,” instead of engaging in conversations

or discussions, we tend to now engage in “station

identification,” through which we “basically identify

ourselves and our predetermined positions, then…

pause appropriately while someone else speaks and

we think about what we are going to say next. Or

we avoid conversation completely.…As a result, the

real conversations of engagement—of listening, and

particularly of listening to the other person as another,

as someone with a different perspective, a different

point of view, a different story or history—rarely

take place anymore.”51

New processes, structures, and venues, therefore,

need to be developed and diffused across communities

in ways that will allow citizens to have free and

open forums to deliberate in new ways and that

involve wider swaths of populations. Rich Harwood,

for example, believes that rather than “coming into

communities and facilitating,” which is antithetical

to a citizen-driven approach, it may be better to work

through existing organizations and infrastructure to

help these institutions understand the importance

of creating opportunities for public problem-solving

and then working with citizens to do so. As Cortés

notes, “people don’t have deliberative conversations

on their own,” but must be supported by mediating

institutions such as neighborhood organizations,

congregations, families, and workplaces.52 New ground

rules for engaging in such deliberation must also be

developed to ensure that respectful and substantive

discourse results and is seen as a foundation for

collective action over the long term.

“Technology can be an effective tool in

distributing information and making connections among people, but it shouldn’t ever

take the place of face-to-face contact.”

Deepak BhargavaExecutive Director of the

Center for Community Change


ConduCt rigorous researCh

about these approaChes.

While considerable research has been conducted

on the levels of volunteering, voting, community

service, and political participation among numerous

demographics, there has been relatively little study

about the motivating forces behind such behaviors,

especially whether people see them as merely a way

to make a difference because they feel that they

have no control over the larger issues that affect

them or as a foundation for all citizens to become

more engaged in community problem-solving and

civic life over time. There is also a dearth of research

that examines whether and to what extent the range

of service and civic engagement efforts occurring

across the country are citizen-driven. How prevalent

are such efforts and what are the circumstances

that fuel them? Some believe there are relatively

few, but others say there are more, because they

simply haven’t been defined as such.

Perhaps the biggest question is whether and to

what extent citizen-driven and citizen-centered

approaches help to embed an ethos of civic

engagement in American life. That will require

longitudinal research that examines the questions

above across various points of time, as well as

others such as: How do different communities

approach issues? Which are effective and why? Are

people more proactive in convening and working

collectively to address public problems? Are there

different types of “community,” and if so, what

are they? Is there an increasing demand for this

type of engagement? Has it changed institutions

or processes in ways that allow for more citizen

participation? If so, how?

enCourage more funding for

these approaChes.

Despite the interest many funders say they have in

enhancing service and civic engagement, there are

still relatively few that have made a commitment

to supporting citizen-centered public work in

communities. Critics charge that this is due to a

reluctance among many institutionalized funders to

seriously consider the importance of local efforts,

preferring to support bigger initiatives, especially

those that are driven by professionals or other

experts who provide training, services, or resources

to people in communities, rather than working in

partnership with them to create more vibrant civic

cultures. Although some funders may assert that

these initiatives “involve community members,”

Bill Schambra observes, that “often means little

more than getting ‘input’ from them and then doing

what funders had planned anyway because they

have a map of the problem in their head and a map

of the solution so that no matter how open-ended

they say they are to community input, that’s all it

is, is community input.”

Citizen-centered work is also incremental, slow,

and does not necessarily reap results that are easily

measured or benchmarked, which has become

increasingly important to funders in recent years.

Additionally, it is more focused on the process

through which citizens come together to decide for

themselves what problems or issues they want to

despite the interest many funders say they have in

enhancing service and civic engagement, there are still

relatively few that have made a commitment to supporting

citizen-centered public work in communities.


address as the way to enhance civic engagement,

rather than on a set of pre-determined issues or

agendas—a concept that even funders who support

community organizing or mobilization can find

challenging because it is inchoate and organic. As

Robert Sherman, director of the effective citizenry

program at the Surdna Foundation and a long-

time supporter of these kinds of efforts, points

out, “These are important approaches, but there

hasn’t yet been a great deal of demonstration that

communities that engage in deliberation can move

effectively from these discussions to action that

gets concrete results. There needs to be just as

much emphasis on the action that comes out of

these processes if we want more funders to pay

attention.”53

The first step, says Schambra, is to articulate

the theory behind these approaches clearly and

make sure funders understand the importance and

legitimacy of supporting “local, concrete, and gritty

grassroots work” that can be the foundation of a

more expansive and, ultimately, national ethos that

embraces and practices civic engagement on a daily

basis. Community foundations, many believe, are

engaged in some of the most innovative efforts to

support community-based public deliberation and

action and need to be involved more integrally in

larger discussions about advancing civic engagement

than they are currently. Funders also can play a role

in helping to link community-based efforts together

and bring them into a more dynamic relationship with

each other so that all people have opportunities to

make their voices heard in addressing the problems

and issues that concern them.

explore and develop

strategies to help

Communities move from

deliberation to aCtion.

While deliberation is important and can help

strengthen the civic life and vitality of communities,

it can and should serve as a means to the end of

communities being able to take action collectively

in ways that reap results that they can see and

experience. Deliberative forums, however, “seem

to occur only here and there, with little discernible

effect,” Noelle McAfee observes, suggesting that

the real challenge is “to find ways to connect

public deliberation to public policy-making, to

find some way that public judgment can make

its way into law.”54 That will require adequate

mediating structures such as churches, schools,

neighborhood associations, and others that people

themselves put together, oversee, and trust. In turn,

these groups can help engage elected officials and

more formal institutions in processes that involve

people more directly.55

moving forward THE ExTRAoRdINARy EffoRTS, TAlENTS, ANd CommITmENT

of those in the service and civic engagement field

have been instrumental in raising public awareness

of and participation in a number of activities that

have benefited millions of Americans across the

country. From volunteering and community service

to organizing and voting, these efforts reflect

Americans’ longstanding belief in the value of

“giving back.”

citizen-centered work is also incremental, slow, and

does not necessarily reap results that are easily

measured or benchmarked, which has become

increasingly important to funders in recent years.


The challenge now is moving from asking Americans

to “plug into” what currently exists—whether through

programs, organizations, or initiatives—to helping

them create their own efforts that will address public

concerns, issues, or problems in ways they see as

most appropriate. This kind of citizen-centered and

citizen-created cultural approach is a subtle, yet

powerful, shift from the way in which service and

civic engagement tend to be discussed, at least

publicly, and implemented. It will require changing

the way in which service and, especially, civic

engagement, are defined, assessed, and implemented.

It will also require coalescence, interconnections,

and momentum coming from many diverse trends

and efforts. Finally, it will require letting go and

letting citizens themselves take control—perhaps

the most difficult challenge of all.

There is evidence, however, that this approach

can work—and is working. Fostering deliberation,

interconnections, public work together across lines

of difference, and the development of a common

language for the common good can lead to increased

confidence and hope that stems from seeing efforts

in particular arenas as parts of a larger whole.

In fact, there are encouraging strands of civic

renewal to build on across the country and that

reflect the citizen-centered framework presented

in this paper and that have the potential to serve

as a new movement for civic revitalization in the

United States.

The service and civic engagement field is also well

positioned to advance these approaches by:

n Offering venues for citizen-centered participation

and deliberation;

n Diffusing information and resources that help

communities, institutions, and people engage in

this work;

n Educating all three sectors (private, nonprofit,

and public) about this approach and encouraging

them to serve as “mediating institutions” in

communities to provide free and open spaces

for public work;

n Devising roadmaps to make clearer the processes

and challenges inherent in fomenting such

“bottom up” approaches; and

n Exploring ways in which deliberation and public

problem-solving can lead to action that leads to

positive and clear results for communities.

Above all, the service and civic engagement field

can generate new hope that people have the ability

and desire to take action to build healthy communities

with vibrant civic cultures that are sustainable and

reflected in everyday life. To achieve this goal, the field

can take the lead in weaving together these various

innovations into a “larger tapestry that can enable

democratic work to become broader and deeper,

as well as more complementary and sustainable

in the decades ahead”56—work that is essential to

“encountering powerful institutional and cultural

forces in our society that tend to undermine citizen

power and capacity for self-government,”57 civic

engagement, and ultimately, democracy.

The challenge now is moving from asking Americans to

“plug into” what currently exists to helping them create their

own efforts that will address public concerns, issues, or

problems in ways they see as most appropriate.


Endnotes1 Rich Harwood, Hope Unraveled, Kettering Foundation Press, 2005.

2 C. Sirianni and L. Friedland, The Civic Renewal Movement: Community-Building and Democracy in the United States, Kettering Foundation Press,

2005, p. 1.

3 Corporation for National and Community Service, Volunteering in America: State Trends and Rankings, Washington, D.C., 2006.

4 National Conference on Citizenship, Civic Health Index, Washington, D.C., 2006.

5 M. McPherson, L. Smith-Lovin, and M. Brashears, “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks Over Two Decades,” American

Sociological Review, 71, 2006, pp. 353-375.

6 S. Vedantam, “Social Isolation Growing in the U.S., Study Finds,” The Washington Post, June 23, 2006, p. A03.

7 H. Boyte, “Breaking the Silence,” Kettering Review, 24(1), 2006, pp. 33-45; The Harwood Institute, “Yearning for Balance: Views of Americans

on Consumption, Materialism, and the Environment,” prepared for the Merck Family Fund, July 1995.

8 Boyte, 2006, p. 33.

9 H. Boyte, email exchange, June 20, 2006.

10 Corporation for National and Community Service, 2006; Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, Review of

Census Current Population Supplement, 2006.

11 Arthur C. Brooks, Gifts of Time and Money: The Role of Charity in America’s Communities, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005; R. Wuthnow, “The Impact

of Religious Involvement on Civic Life,” in United We Serve, E.J. Dionne, K. Meltzer Drogosz (Eds.), Brookings Institution, pp. 222-237; Ira

Harkavy, interview, June 28, 2006.

12 Lester Salamon, “The Resilient Sector: The State of Nonprofit America,” Brookings Institution, in The State of Nonprofit America (L. Salamon, Ed.,

2003, pp. 3-16); Urban Institute, National Center on Charitable Statistics, Business Master File, January 2006.

13 Sirianni and Friedland, 2005, p. 1.

14 Peter Levin, interview, June 5, 2005.

15 Jane Buckingham, interview, June 30, 2005.

16 L. Friedland and S. Morimoto, “The Changing Lifeworld of Young People: Risk, Resume-padding, and Civic Engagement” (Working Paper # 40),

University of Maryland: Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), 2006.

17 MTV/US 30 Group, “Just Cause: Today’s Activism,” 2006. Available at http://www.mtv.com/thinkmtv/research/pdf/Just.Cause.FNL.APX.pdf#sea

rch=%22%22Just%20Cause%22%20MTV%22.

18 Judy Woodruff, interview, June 22, 2006.

19 John Bridgeland, interview, June 22, 2006.

20 Bill Schambra, interview, June 12, 2006.


22 N. Eliasoph, “What if Good Citizens’ Etiquette Requires Silencing Political Conversation in Everyday Life? Notes from the Field.” Paper presented at

conference on “The Transformation of Civic Life,” Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro and Nashville, Tenn., Nov. 12-13, 1999. Available

at www.mtsu.edu/~seig/paper_n_eliasoph.html.

23 Ira Harkavy, interview, June 28, 2006.


25 Ibid.

26 M. McCoy, opening remarks for a meeting of civic funders and leaders hosted by the Funders Committee for Citizen Participation at the Open

Society Institute, Nov. 9, 2000.

27 P. Levine, “Civic Renewal in America,” Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly, 26(1/2), 2006, p. 3.

28 D. Mathews, “…afterthoughts,” Kettering Review, 24(1), p. 70.


29 Mathews, 2006, p. 70.

30 H. Saunders, Politics is About Relationship: A Blueprint for the Citizens’ Century, Kettering Foundation Press, 2005.

31 O. Ali, “Those Who Make the Rules, Rule,” Committee for a Unified Independent Party, New York, 2002; J. Salit, “The Two Big Parties Have Had

It,” New York Newsday, Dec. 16, 2002, p. A29.

32 C. Gibson, “Thinking Outside the Ballot Box: A Broader Political Engagement Strategy for America’s Civic Organizations,” National Civic Review,

summer 2004.

33 Levine, 2006, p. 2.


35 Melville, T. L. Willingham, and J. R. Dedrick, “National Issues Forums: A Network of Communities Promoting Public Deliberation,” in The

Deliberative Democracy Handbook; J. Gastil and P. Levine (Eds.), Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2005, pp. 37-58.

36 E. Fagotto and A. Fung, “Embedded Deliberation: Entrepreneurs, Organizations, and Public Action,” final report for the William and Flora Hewlett

Foundation (unpublished), 2006.

37 C. Lukensmeyer and S. Brigham, “Taking Democracy to Scale: Large Scale Interventions—For Citizens, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science,

41(1), 2005, pp. 47-60.

38 Jon Zaff, interview, June 7, 2006.

39 J. Torney-Purta and S. Vermeer, Developing Citizenship Competencies from Kindergarten Through Grade 12: A Background Paper for Policymakers

and Educators, Education Commission of the States/National Center for Learning and Citizenship, Denver, Colo., 2004.

40 John Minkler, email exchange, July 20, 2006.

41 Kenny Holdsman, email exchange, July 20, 2006.

42 N. McAfee, “The Myth of Democracy and the Limits of Deliberation,” Kettering Review, 24(1), 2006, pp. 58-68.

43 Les Lenkowsky, interview, June 13, 2006.

44 Levine, email exchange, July 19, 2006.

45 C. Sirianni, “Can a Federal Regulator Become a Civic Enabler? Watersheds at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” National Civic Review,

2006 (forthcoming).

46 Joe Trippi, interview, June 26, 2006.

47 M. Rogers, (June 13, 2006), “Can Web 2.0 Change the World?” retrieved on June 21, 2006 at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13230538/print1/

displaymode/1098; M. Nauffts, “Newsmakers, Interview with Daniel Ben Horin,” Philanthropy News Digest (PND), May 2, 2006, retrieved on

July 26, 2006, at http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/newsmakers/nwsmkr.jhtml?id=142400017.

48 Allison Fine, interview, June 21, 2006; W. Leung, “Technology Catalyst in Protest Plans: Students Spread Word with Site, Cell Phones,” San Bernadino

County Sun, March 28, 2006; S. Gold,“Student Protests Echo the ’60s, But With a High-Tech Buzz,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 2006; “Technology

Key to Promoting Immigration Protests,” click2Houston.com, retrieved on July 30, 2006 at www.click2houston.com/print/8335647/detail.html.

49 Howard Rheingold, interview, June 16, 2006.

50 Deepak Bhargava, interview, July 31, 2006.

51 E. Cortés, “Toward a Democratic Culture,” Kettering Review, 24(1), 2006, pp. 46-57.

52 Ibid, p. 48.

53 Robert Sherman, interview, July 27, 2006.

54 McAfee, 2006, p.64.

55 Ibid; E. Cortés, 2006.

56 Sirianni and Friedland, 2005, pp. 4-5.

57 Ibid.

28 THE CASE FOUNDATION

Acknowledgements

In preparing this paper, the Case Foundation sought a variety of perspectives from leaders who could bring

new thoughts and energy the topic of civic engagement. We extend our gratitude to the paper’s author,

Cynthia Gibson, for her insight, diligence, and commitment. We would also like to thank the following people,

who contributed their time and thought through interviews, comments, research, and reviews. Not only did

they help shape this paper, but their efforts are helping to bring the ideas to life.

Daniel Ben-Horin, CompuMentor

Deepak Bhargava, Center for Community Change

Harry Boyte, Center for Democracy and Citizenship at University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs

John Bridgeland, Civic Enterprises

Jane Buckingham, The Intelligence Group

Ernie Cortés, Industrial Areas Foundation

Ami Dar, Idealist.org

Allison Fine, author, Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age

Ira Harkavy, Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania

Rich Harwood, The Harwood Institute

Kenneth Holdsman, Academy for Educational Development/Youth Innovation Fund

Les Lenkowsky, Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University

Peter Levine, Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Maryland

Carolyn Lukensmeyer, AmericaSpeaks

David Mathews, Kettering Foundation

Noelle McAfee, Kettering Review

Martha McCoy, Study Circles Resource Center

John Minkler, education consultant

David Reingold, Public Affairs and Public Policy Programs at Indiana University

Howard Rheingold, author

Eugene Rivers, Ella J.Baker House and Azusa Christian Community

Harold Saunders, International Institute for Sustained Dialogue

Bill Schambra, Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal at Hudson Institute

Robert Sherman, Surdna Foundation

Carmen Sirianni, Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University

Joe Trippi, Trippi & Associates

Judy Woodruff, CNN and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions

Jon Zaff, America’s Promise

1717 rhode island ave. nW7th FloorWashington, dC 20036(202) 467-5788WWW.CaseFoundation.org

citizens at the center: a new approach to civic engagement

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